School Library

Meet the Librarian

Our librarians are our Deputy and Assistant Head Teachers, Mr Capewell and Miss Ware.

Library Environment

Functional Seating Areas

Our practical seating space allows children to carry out independent work, helping them to learn how to do things for themselves including making decisions and taking responsibility. The seating area is used extensively for booster groups and interventions, for Accelerated Reader time, quiet newspaper reading, IT and lunchtime groups. The space is also used for independent guided reading tasks where the children in UKS2 are able to find their non-fiction topic books unaided and then work on researching tasks to extend their specific topic knowledge.

Our Book Selection

Fiction Selection

We have over 1000 titles in our fiction library alone – from comedy to fairy tales, graphic novel’s to fantasy books, there really is something for everyone. Our fantastic range of books include titles from authors such as Jacqueline Wilson, Cressida Cowell and Roald Dahl.

Non-Fiction Section

Our non-fiction section is extensive and helps our teachers and children alike to research and extend their topic learning. Children are able to find the books with easily labelled shelving, and our non-fiction books are filed using the standard library Dewey Decimal Classification System. We believe that using this system will help children to negotiate their way around their own local libraries, giving them the knowledge of how to easily track down their favourite book on Space, Art, Culture or Technology.

New Releases

We are committed as a school in providing up to date literature for our children and therefore buy new releases that will continue to inspire children to read. We choose our new releases by looking out for books that have received awards in the literature world, and also with a ‘suggestion box’ that children can put in which books they would like us to buy in for them. Finally, we assess the ‘Accelerated Reader’ hits to see which books children and reporting as their favourites once they have finished reading them. This enables us to look out for other new releases by the author’s that the children are loving to read.

Fiction in different languages

We have a small selection of books in our library that are written in other languages. This is a focus for us as we would like to extend our current offering, the books currently on offer for our children are written in Polish, Latvian, Spanish and Portuguese. These books can be taken as additional reading material for children alongside our English language fiction selection.

First News

First News is a weekly newspaper that we subscribe to, which is aimed at children aged 7-14 years of age. We hope that the newspapers help children to talk about the news in an easy to understand and non-threatening way. First News cover issues which are relevant to children and which may specifically affect them. Inside there is a mix of world news and UK news, and also lots of entertainment such as games, animals, sport and puzzles.

100 Books to Read Before You Leave Year 6!

We believe that offering our children experience of a variety of books will not only develop their literacy skills but also inspire them to engage with books, develop a love of reading and create motivation to write. We understand that finding those ‘impossible to put down’ books can be elusive which is why we have stocked our library with the ‘100 books to read before…’ list. There is an exclusive shelving area where these books can be found, and the children are encouraged to try something new from this selection over the year. Titles include, ‘Black Beauty,’ ‘Goldfish Boy,’ and, ‘Watership Down.’

Accelerated Reader

AR is a reading programme that helps teachers to support and monitor children’s reading practice. Each child picks a book at their own level and reads it at their own pace. When finished, the child takes an online reading quiz to see how much of the book they understood. All of our fiction titles are stored in AR book level colours, so that the children can easily select a book from their reading level. We feel that children make the most progress when they read books that interest them and the AR system allows children to search for additional books based on which books they have enjoyed or the types of book that they mostly choose. As the children take a quiz at the end of each book, teachers can assess the child’s individual progress on a daily basis, helping the children to choose books that are challenging enough to aid their progression. There is also an inter-classroom competition, as AR counts each word the children read, allowing the teachers to display their total class words. The children love to see their word count rising and hope to be the school’s champion readers by the end of the school year.

Click here to see how Accelerated Reader has improved the school’s Literacy provision.